Congressman Gerlach on the right side of gun issues

This is in response to Erica Redenhan Weiherer’s recent letter to the editor.

Congressman Jim Gerlach is informed and educated in gun laws, and his actual experience would be important to listen to as potential gun control legislation comes before him. I am sure he has watched, as I have, the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, lose credibility by recommending not one, but two illegal gun handling suggestions in under two weeks. His first was to tell women that they should buy a shotgun for home protection. The head of President Obama’s Gun Control Task Force goes on to suggest that walking out on the balcony and firing two blasts into the air would scare away any intruder. Law abiding gun owners know this is illegal, and so should the vice president.

Ten days after that pronouncement, Mr. Biden goes on to suggest that women would be well advised to shoot through the door breaking another law in all 50 states. A principal rule in safe gun handling is to be absolutely sure of your target and what is behind it. So it is with this uneducated and unsafe lack of credibility we move through the various discussions of gun control, while ignoring the gun rights of folks who own, shoot and carry weapons daily. To his credit, Congressman Gerlach recognizes that the majority of his constituents want no additional gun laws.

In discussing the home invasion scenario posted by Ms. Weiherer, the congressman expressed a common-sense point of view, that he would protect his family from intruders who break into his home in the middle of the night. The writer hopes for better bullet management while a home invader or two, three or four are walking up the hallway stairs. All tactical gun classes teach to shoot center mass and stop the intruder. No one who has ever been in a gunfight has ever said, “I had too much ammunition.” But the writer takes a position that a ten bullet limit in her home would be fine. I find that thinking to be dangerous and ignorant. Somehow the writer feels that a training class can teach everyone to shoot more accurately at night, after being woken from a sound sleep with rattled nerves. The congressman recognizes that such home invaders are not mere “trespassers,” and I doubt even Ms. Weiherer believes that such criminals could be banished merely by a polite invitation to leave. Limiting a magazine in this hypothetical situation posed by the writer would most likely get the victim of the home intrusion killed. The congressman recognizes that in the event of a home invasion on his property, it is the life of his family that needs to be saved, not those who knowingly break into someone’s domicile.

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Ms. Weiherer is obviously, and blatantly, anti-gun based on her statements.

I encourage the congressman to continue to delve into better mental health issues that are lacking in our current background check system. We must not lose sight that these tragedies were caused by mentally unstable people that the new laws proposed would not stop from gaining access to a gun. That is where the lawmakers should be focused.